and those barrels are heavy,” he said heartily. “I might as well make myself useful and help you unload.” Taking off his coat Walter Wills voluntarily helped at the task that belonged to Will Edgley, the drayman. If May Edgley, during her girlhood, rose higher than any of the others of the Edgley family she also fell lower. “She had her chance and threw it away,” was the word that went round and surely no one else in that family ever had so completely the town’s sympathy. Lillian Edgley was outside the pale of the town’s life, and Kate was but a lesser edition of her sister. She waited on table at the Fownsby House, and on almost any evening might have been seen walking out with some traveling man. She also took the evening train to neighboring towns but returned to Bidwell later on the same night or at daylight the next morning. She did not prosper as Lillian did and grew tired of the dullness of small town life. At twenty-two she went to live in Cleveland where she got a job as cloak model in a large store. Later she went on the road as an actress, in a burlesque show, and Bidwell heard no more of her. As for May Edgley, all through her childhood and until her seventeenth year she was a model of good behavior. Everyone spoke of it. She was, unlike the other Edgleys, small and dark, and unlike her sisters dressed herself in plain neat-fitting clothes. As a young girl in the public school she began to attract attention because of her proficiency in the classes. Both Lillian and Kate Edgley had been slovenly students, who spent their time ogling boys and the men teachers but May looked at no one and as soon as school was dismissed in the afternoon went home to her mother, a tall tired-looking woman who seldom went out of her own house.